I love the idea of HHB being told as a framed story.My thought was that both HHB and MN would be framed stories, both told at gatherings of the Seven Friends of Narnia. But HHB told at Cair Paravel would be great too.

HHB would have the same three actors for Peter, Edmund and Lucy in its story cast at their 'oldest' age and doing the story telling at the age they have reached in LB.

MN would have young Digory and young Polly in its story cast, while older Professor and Polly tell the story in the frame.

bardiafox7 wrote:I have an idea for a framing device that could bookend the Horse and His boy film. We open in a little boy's room that is dark. The boy is in bed supposed to be asleep but instead he is wide awake. Then the bedroom door opens a crack letting a little light in. A woman,his mother, pops her head through the door to check on her son. She sees that he's still awake; she admonishes him to go to sleep. The boy begs his mother for one more story. She says no and to got to sleep. He begs and begs and she gives in. She opens the door all the way and walks in with a lamp in her hand. She sets the lamp on the stand beside his bed. She sits down on the bed next to him and tells him this is the last one and to go to bed after this. He asks her for his favorite story.

Just as King Caspian appeared at the end of SC, it has occurred to me that Rilian, restored to Narnia, and now settled with a family, would also be a suitable candidate for your framing of HHB, especially as unlike the book SC the current film may not refer to him again after his reunion with Caspian, his father. In SC Prince Rilian might well have known quite a bit about this story, which was presented by minstrels at that Cair Paravel banquet at the beginning of SC. Rilian even whistled a tune connected with Corin Thunderfist once he was released from his captivity. So I'd imagine he would love telling his own son that story as well as or even instead of his own.

To me HHB is so action-and-dialogue based there really is no need for a narrative device. I do think that a conversation between Edmund, Jill and Eustace would be the least painful/awkward/intrusive way to connect HHB to the other stories in the "Tri-Star trilogy"(?), but it would serve no other purpose. A narrative that does not provide that connection would be a waste of screen time.